Page 46 of Grown-Up Second Chance

“Do you have to be such a slob?” Kathleen shot back. “I always figured you’d grow out of it, but …” She shook her head sadly, reminding me ever so much of Eeyore, the depressed donkey from Winnie-the-Pooh.

“I’m not a slob.” Liz waved the silk scarf she’d looped around her neck. “I’m artistic.”

Kathleen and I laughed.

I had been so close to finishing my work. She was one of my more demanding clients and had been pestering me for a week to complete the analysis.

“Can it wait a half hour?” I asked.

“No,” Kathleen said firmly.

“Since when did you become the boss?” I shot back, reverting to old behaviors from childhood.

“We have to share this space. I like things clean and tidy. Is that too much to ask?”

Boss to martyr in thirty seconds.

It wasn’t worth the time to argue. I knew my sister. She was relentless. If a calf went missing, she’d ride day and night to find it, no matter what the weather.

“Let me recover this file, and I’ll get on it.”

“Diane,” she growled.

“Can it, Kathleen.” Fortunately, the file was easy to recover, and I shut down before Kathleen could build up too much of a head of steam.

Starting with the living area, I collected things that didn’t belong and moved them. Soon there was a pile on Liz’s bed in the back room. She’d always been like that. I remember Mom complaining about it. Liz had originally shared a room with Kathleen, while I’d gotten my own room as the oldest.

Boy, how I’d loved my room.

But Kathleen’s complaints grew too loud, and I’d been forced to switch places with Liz.

As I moved her stuff out of the common areas, including a bra draped on a towel rack and socks that had missed the laundry basket, my resentment grew.

When I found my favorite moisturizer—one of my few indulgences—on her nightstand, I lost it. I stormed to Liz and confronted her. “Leave my stuff alone!” I yelled as I stood toe to toe with her.

“Jeez, Di, chill.” She stepped away. “I only borrowed it. You don’t have to lose it.”

“Yes, she does,” Kathleen said. “You have no boundaries. You never have. If we’re going to travel for a year in this thing together, you’re going to have to respect our stuff and our common space.”

“Now you’re both ganging up on me?” Her eyes widened.

Great. Now we were going to have a teary meltdown, Liz’s other favorite tactic when airy-fairy artist didn’t cut it.

“Stop. Right. There,” I said. “I put up with all kinds of crap when I lived with Larry. I divorced him so I didn’t have to deal with it anymore.”

“So what?” Liz asked. “Are you going to divorce me, too?”

The idea didn’t sound half bad.

“Nobody is divorcing anyone,” Kathleen said. “We’re trying to establish some ground rules. That’s all.”

Liz dropped into the nearest chair like a deflated doll. “I know. You’re right. It’s not that I don’t care … I get distracted. My mind jumps from one thing to another. I start off in one direction and then find myself going in the other. The only thing that keeps me focused is my painting. The only thing.”

She sounded like the weight of the world was crushing her.

Kathleen and I looked at each other.

“Have you ever been tested for ADD?” I asked.

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